U.N. Workers Murdered, Kidnapped

A U.N. refugee worker was killed and a second was
kidnapped in a raid today in West Africa, officials said. The
motive for the attack was not immediately clear.

Mensah Kpognon, 50, of Togo, was slain at his home by unknown
gunmen in the southeastern Guinea town of Macenta, near the border
with Liberia, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said.

UNHCR said it had heard that the attackers abducted another of
its staff members, Sapeu Laurence Djeya of the Ivory Coast.

The raid came nearly two weeks after the slaying of three U.N.
staff members in Indonesian-controlled West Timor.

“Yet another humanitarian has been savagely killed trying to
help refugees,” said Frederick Barton, deputy high commissioner,
at the agency’s Geneva headquarters. “We haven’t even buried our
three other colleagues murdered in West Timor 10 days ago, and now
we have lost another friend and co-worker.”

Mystery Assailants

A statement by UNHCR headquarters said Kpognon had contacted the
agency’s offices in the Guinean capital, Conakry, at 6:30 a.m.
today to report unrest in the Macenta and to say that attackers
had burned the town’s military garrison two hours earlier.

UNHCR officials in Macenta were sent to check on Kpognon after
he lost contact with Conakry, and found his body at his house, the
agency said.

“He had apparently been shot by the retreating gunmen,” the
statement said. “His house had been burned, as well as a UNHCR
vehicle parked outside.” It said several bodies were seen in the
streets of the town.

The agency said it had issued an urgent appeal to governments in
the region to join in the effort to obtain the release of Djeya,
the female staffer.

It was unclear what led the attack that killed Kpognon, who
studied at the University of Iowa in 1984-85.

Cross Border Raids

Guinea hosts more than 460,000 refugees, one of the largest
refugee populations in Africa. Some 330,000 are from Sierra Leone
and 126,000 from Liberia.

Most of the refugees in the Macenta area are Liberian, but some
Sierra Leonean refugees have fled into the area recently following
attacks by Sierra Leonean rebels.

There have been several cross-border raids into Guinea recently.

UNHCR noted that the government has said at least 80 people were
killed by anti-Guinean dissidents in attacks on several Guinean
villages near the borders of Sierra Leone and Liberia.

It said some 50 people were killed Sept. 1 in an attack on
Massadou village, about 15 miles from Macenta.

The Guinean government blamed the attack on gunmen from Liberia.
Liberia has accused Guinea of harboring rebels who crossed into
northern Liberia in July and have been fighting government forces
there ever since.

Tensions have been high toward refugees in Guinea recently.
There have been a number of attacks on refugees in Conakry and
elsewhere in the past week since President Lansana Conte accused
them in a television broadcast of harboring anti-Guinean
dissidents.